A Lawman's Christmas: A McKettricks of Texas Novel (7 page)

The dog whimpered.

“Nothin', Marshal,” one of the men answered, in a drunken whine. “The poor mutt's half-starved, just a bag of bones. We figured on putting it out of its misery, that's all. Meant it as a kindness.”

“Get the hell out of here,” Clay said. He could not abide a bully.

The two men responded by turning on their heels and running in the other direction.

Clay waited until they were out of sight before he put the .45 back in its holster and approached the dog. “You in a bad way there, fella?” he asked, crouching to offer a hand.

The animal sniffed cautiously at his fingers and whimpered again.

“Where'd you come from?” Clay asked, gently examining the critter for broken bones or open wounds. He seemed to be all right, though his ribs protruded and his belly was concave and he stunk like all get-out.

The dog whined, though this time there was less sorrow in the sound.

“You know,” Clay told the animal companionably, “I was just thinking to myself that what I need is a dog to keep me company. Now, here you are. How'd you like to help me keep the peace in this sorry excuse for a town?”

The dog seemed amenable to the idea, and raised himself slowly, teetering a little, to his four fur-covered feet. He had burrs stuck in his coat, that poor cuss, and there was no telling what color he was, or if he leaned toward any particular breed.

“You come on with me, if you can walk,” Clay said. “I brought home what was left of my supper, and it seems to me you could use a decent meal.”

With that, he turned to head back toward the sidewalk. The dog limped after him, pausing every few moments, as though afraid he'd committed some transgression without knowing about it.

Back at the jailhouse, Clay got a better look at the dog, after lighting a lantern to see by, but seeing didn't help much. The creature was neither big nor little, and he had floppy ears, but that was the extent of what Clay could make out.

Glad to have something to do, not to mention some companionship, Clay poured the remains of his chicken
and dumplings onto the one tin plate he possessed and set it on the floor, near the stove.

The dog sniffed at the food, looked up at Clay with the kind of uncertainty that breaks a decent person's heart and waited.

“You go ahead and have supper,” Clay said gently. “I imagine you could use some water, too.”

Slowly, cautiously, the dog lowered his muzzle and began to eat.

Clay walked softly, approaching the water bucket, and ladled up a dipperful.

The dog lapped thirstily from the well of the dipper, then returned to his supper, clearly ravenous, licking the plate clean as a whistle.

Clay carried in more water from the pump out back, heated it bucket by bucket on the potbellied stove and finally filled the washtub he'd found in one of the cells. He eased the dog into the warm water and sluiced him down before lathering his hide with his own bar of soap.

The animal didn't raise any fuss, he simply stood there, shivering and looking like nothing so much as a half-drowned rat. Gradually, it became clear that his coat was brown and white, speckled like a pinto horse.

Clay dried him off with one of the two towels he'd purchased earlier, over at the mercantile, hefted him out of the tub and set him gently on his feet, near the stove.

The dog looked up at him curiously, head tilted to one side.

Clay chuckled. “Now, then,” he said. “You look a lot more presentable than you did before.”

The dog gave a single, tentative
woof,
obviously unsure how the remark would be received in present company.

Clay leaned to pat the animal's damp head. “What you are,” he said, “is a coincidence. Like I told you, I was thinking about how much I'd like to have a dog, and then you and I made our acquaintance. But since ‘coincidence' would be too much trouble for a name, I figure I'll call you Chester.”

“Woof,” said Chester, with more confidence than before.

Clay laughed. “Chester it is, then,” he agreed.

Using a rough blanket from the cot in the jail cell, Clay fashioned a bed for the dog, close to the stove. Chester sniffed the cloth, stepped gingerly onto it, made a circle and settled down with a sigh.

“'Night,” Clay said.

Chester closed his eyes, sighed again and slept.

 

T
HE HENS HAD ONLY LAID
three eggs between the lot of them, Dara Rose discovered the next morning, when she visited the chicken coop, but she wasn't as disappointed by this as she normally would have been.

She had ten dollars tucked between the leaves of her Bible—a fortune.

And she had a future, a bright one, as Blue River, Texas's sole distributor of Wildflower Salve. All she had to do was fill out the coupon and mail it in, and before the New Year, she'd be in business.

Granted, there weren't a lot of people in Blue River, but there were plenty of surrounding farms and ranches, and those isolated women would be thrilled to purchase salve in a pretty tin, especially after she explained the benefits of regular use.

Not that she knew exactly what those benefits
were,
but the Wildflower Salve people had promised to send a training guide along with her first shipment.

As soon as she'd gotten Edrina off to school, she intended to write a long letter to Piper, explaining that
her
letter had been accidentally misplaced all this time, and she'd only received it the day before, and that was why her answer was so late in coming. Of course she'd thank her cousin profusely for the generous gift of ten dollars, and bring Piper up-to-date where she and the girls were concerned.

Her mind bumbled back and forth between the planned letter and her impending career in merchandising like a bee trapped inside a jar while she prepared oatmeal for breakfast, toasted bread in the oven and of
ficiated over a debate between Edrina and Harriet, concerning whose turn it was sleep in the middle of the bed that night.

Neither one wanted to, and Dara Rose finally said
she'd
take the middle, for heaven's sake, and what had she done to deserve two such argumentative daughters?

After breakfast, Dara Rose and Harriet bundled up to walk Edrina to school. Normally, Edrina managed the distance on her own, but today, Dara Rose wanted a word with Miss Krenshaw.

“I'm
already
being punished,” Edrina fussed, as the three of them hurried along a road hoary with frost and hardened snow. “I
told you
I have to stay after and wash the blackboard. So why do you need to talk to Miss Krenshaw, when you know all that?”

Dara Rose hid a smile. She was holding Harriet's hand, and trying to pace herself to the child's much shorter strides. “I merely want to inquire about the Christmas pageant,” she replied. There was always some sort of program at the schoolhouse, whether it was carol singing, a Nativity play or an evening of recitals, and everyone attended.

“Oh,” said Edrina, still sounding not only mystified, but apparently a little nervous, too.

Dara Rose wondered if there was something her daughter should have told her, but hadn't.

“Do you think it will snow again, Mama?” Harriet asked, tilting her head way back to look up at the glowering sky. “Christmas is less than two weeks away, and St. Nicholas will need a lot of snow, since he travels in a sleigh.”

“Goose,” Edrina said, nudging her sister with one elbow. “There
isn't
any St. Nicholas, remember?”

“Edrina,” Dara Rose interceded gently.

“I'm
pretending,
that's all,” Harriet said, with a toss of her head. “You can't
stop
me, either.”

“Pretending is
stupid,
” Edrina said. “It's for babies.”

Dara Rose stopped, and both her children had to stop, too, since she was holding Harriet's hand at the time and it was easy to catch Edrina by the shoulder and halt her progress.

“Enough,” Dara Rose said firmly.

They began to walk again.

 

T
HE SKY WAS HEAVY
and gray that morning when Clay left Chester to digest the leftovers from his hotel dining room breakfast within the warm radius of the jailhouse stove and headed over to the livery stable to fetch Outlaw.

It was cold and getting colder, so Clay raised the collar of his duster as he led the saddled gelding out into the road. There had been snow during the night, leaving
a hard crust on the ground, and there would be more, judging by the weighted clouds brooding overhead, but the ride was a short one and he'd be back in Blue River before any serious weather had a chance to set in.

Raised in the high country, where a soft, slow, feathery snowfall could turn into a raging blizzard within a span of ten minutes, he had a sense of what signs he ought to look out for, as well as those he could safely ignore.

Today, all the indications—the direction of wind, the foul promise of the darkening sky, the way the cold bit through the heavy canvas of his duster—inclined a man toward caution.

He let Outlaw have his head once they were out of town, let the horse run for the sheer joy of it, and they soon reached their destination, the flat acres where Clay intended to erect a house and a barn.

There, he dismounted and left Outlaw to catch his breath and graze on the scant remains of last summer's grass, paced off the perimeters of the house and marked the corners with piles of small rocks. He did the same for the barn, then stood a while, the wind slicing clear to his marrow, and imagined the place, finished.

The house, a kit he'd sent away to Sears, Roebuck and Company for, amounted to a sensible rectangle, the kind he could easily add on to as the years went by, with win
dows on all sides, white clapboard walls and a shingled roof. He'd have to hire some help to put the thing together, of course, but he planned to do a lot of the work with his own hands, and that included everything from laying floorboards to gathering rock for the fireplace and then mortaring the stones together.

With the McKettrick family expanding the way it had been for some years, Clay had helped build several houses, and put up additions, too. The kit wouldn't arrive until late April, but he'd need to have the foundation ready, and the well dug, too.

Of course, a lot depended on what kind of winter they were in for—Blue River was in the Hill Country, and therefore the climate wasn't as temperate as it was in some parts of Texas—but he could already feel the heft of a shovel in his hands, the steady strain in his muscles, and he was heartened.

Next year at this time, he promised himself, he'd be ranching, right here on this land. He'd have a wife and, if possible, a baby on the way. Christmas would be getting close, and he'd go out and cut a tree and bring it into the house to be hung with ornaments and paper garlands, and there would be a fire crackling on the hearth—

But that was next year, and this was now, Clay reminded himself, with a sigh. He assessed the sky again, then whistled, low, for Outlaw.

The horse trotted over, reins dangling, and Clay gathered them and swung up into the saddle.

“We've got our work cut out for us,” he told the animal.

The snow began coming down, slowly at first and then in earnest, when they were still about a mile outside of town, and by the time he and Outlaw reached the livery, it was hard to see farther than a dozen feet in any direction.

Zeb Dooley, the old man who ran the stable and adjoining blacksmith's shop, came out to meet him. Taking Outlaw's reins as soon as Clay had stepped down from the saddle, Zeb shouted to be heard over the rising screech of the wind. “Best head on over to the jailhouse or the Bitter Gulch, Marshal, because this blow is bound to get worse before it gets better!”

Clay took the reins back. “I want to look in over at the schoolhouse,” he called in reply. “Make sure the children are all right.”

Zeb, clad for the cold in dungarees and a heavy coat, shook his balding head. “Miss Krenshaw will keep them there 'til it's safe to leave. The town makes sure there's always a stash of firewood and grub, in case they need it.”

Clay's worries were only partially allayed by Zeb's reassurance. A storm like this sure as hell meant trouble
for
somebody,
and he didn't feel right about heading for the jailhouse to hunker down with Chester and wait it out, not just yet, anyway.

Clay turned away, mounted up again, bent low over Outlaw's neck to speak to him and started for the far edge of town.

He rode slowly, Outlaw stalwartly shouldering his way through the thickening snow, up one street and down another, until he'd covered all of them. Nobody called out to him as he passed, and lantern light glowed in most of the windows so, after half an hour, he and the horse felt their way back to the livery.

There was no sign of Zeb, and the big double doors of the stables were latched and rattling under the assault of the wind.

Clay opened them, led Outlaw inside and into his stall, gave him hay and made sure his water trough was full. Then he retraced his steps, latched the doors again and walked, wind-battered, toward the jailhouse.

D
ara Rose rubbed the glass in the door of the mercantile with one gloved hand, clearing a circle to look through and seeing nothing but dizzying flurries of angry white. She'd come here to mail her letter to Piper and send off the coupon to the Wildflower Salve Company, and now she wished she hadn't been in such a hurry to leave home.

Mr. Bickham doubled as Blue River's postmaster. Being in a position to know who wrote to whom, and who received letters from whom, he tended to mind every body's business but his own.

“You might just as well sit down here by the stove as try to see any farther than the end of your nose in weather like this,” Philo counseled, from behind his long counter. “That's about the tenth time you wiped off that window, and it just keeps fogging up again.”

Dara Rose bit her lower lip, still fretful. She and Harriet were safe and warm, but what about Edrina? Suppose she tried to walk home from school in this storm? Miss Krenshaw could be depended upon to keep her students inside, of course, but Edrina was, as recent history proved, well able to get past her teacher when she chose.

Harriet, who considered the whole thing a marvelous lark, sat on top of a pickle barrel and gazed raptly at the exquisite doll in the display window. Dara Rose, noting this, felt another pinch to the heart.

She had the ten dollars Piper had sent; she could buy the doll for Harriet and several books for Edrina, set it all out for them after they went to bed on Christmas Eve, to find in the morning and rejoice over. But both children still needed warm coats, and sturdy shoes that fit properly, and for all the vegetables she'd stored in the root cellar and the chickens producing fresh eggs right along—until this morning, that is—there was barely enough food to see them through the winter.

This year, with Parnell gone and even the roof over their heads a precarious blessing, there would be no store-bought presents, no brightly decorated tree, no goose or turkey for Christmas dinner.

“I could let you have that doll for two dollars even,” Philo whispered, suddenly standing beside Dara Rose
and startling her half out of her skin. Because of the thick layers of sawdust covering the floor, she hadn't heard him approach. “Put a dollar down, and you can pay the rest over time, out of the egg money.”

Dara Rose looked at him sharply, momentarily distracted from her worry over Edrina, who might at any moment take it into her head to strike out for home, blizzard or no blizzard, perhaps concerned about her mother and sister and the chickens.

That would be like Edrina.

“No, Mr. Bickham,” Dara Rose whispered back, while Harriet paid neither one of them a whit of notice, “I will not be purchasing the doll, and that's final.”

“But look at your little girl,” the storekeeper cajoled. “She wants that pretty thing in the worst way.”

Dara Rose's cheeks throbbed, and her throat thickened. It was only by the sternest exercise of self-control that she did not burst into tears. “I can barely afford to give my children what they
need,
” she told him pointedly, though in a very quiet voice. “What they
want
is out of the question just now. Please do not press the matter further.”

Philo gave a deep sigh and, at the same moment, the door Dara Rose had been standing next to only moments before burst open on a gust of wind.

Snow blew in, along with a swift and bitter chill, and
then Clay McKettrick stepped over the threshold, accompanied by a medium-size dog, coated in white. Even for a strong man like he was, shutting that door again was an effort.

Dara Rose stood looking at the marshal and the dog, feeling oddly stricken, a state this man seemed to inflict upon her at every encounter.
She
might have been the one braving the frigid weather outside, instead of Clay, the way her breath stalled in the back of her throat.

With a smile, Clay took off his hat, dusting off the snow with his other hand, and nodded. “Afternoon, Mrs. Nolan,” he said.

His voice was deep and quiet, his manner unhurried.

Dara Rose didn't answer, merely inclined her head briefly in response.

Harriet, meanwhile, forgot the doll she'd been so fascinated by until now, leaped nimbly off the pickle barrel and slowly approached the newcomers.

“Does that dog bite?” she asked forthrightly, studying the animal closely before tilting her head back to look up at Clay.

“I can't rightly say, one way or the other,” Clay replied honestly. “He and I just took up with each other last night, so we're not all that well acquainted yet. Offhand, though, I'd say you oughtn't to pet old Chester until we know a little more about his nature.”

Harriet smiled, enchanted. “Hullo, Chester,” she said.

Chester looked her over, but stayed close to Clay's side.

“I don't normally allow dogs in my store,” Philo said. Then, with a smile and a genial spreading of his hands, “But I'll make an exception for you, Marshal.”

“I'm obliged,” Clay said. “It's a fair hike back to the jailhouse and I'd rather not leave him alone there, anyhow.”

Dara Rose opened her mouth, closed it again. When it came to Clay McKettrick, she was as bad as Harriet with the doll, prone to ogle and be struck dumb with awe.

As if to prove himself a gentleman, Chester ambled away from Clay to nestle down in the warm sawdust in front of the stove. With a sigh of grateful contentment, the dog closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Harriet giggled. “He must be tired,” she said.

“I reckon he is at that,” Clay agreed. “I think old Chester traveled a hard road before he found his way to me.”

Dara Rose had never envied a dog before, but she did in that moment. She'd traveled a hard road, too, she and the girls, but it hadn't led to a handsome, steady-minded man who was probably able to handle just about anything.

She cleared her throat, fixing to make another attempt at speaking, but before a word came to her, Harriet had reached out and taken Clay's hand, tugging him in the direction of the display window.

“Look,”
she said reverently, pointing at the doll.

Dara Rose finally found her voice, but it didn't hold up for long. “Harriet—”

Clay lifted the child easily, holding her in one arm, so she was at eye level with the splendid toy.

“Isn't she pretty?” Harriet murmured, wonderstruck again.

“Not as pretty as you are,” Clay told her. His gaze sought Dara Rose, found her, and brought yet another embarrassing blush to her cheeks. His expression was solemn, as if he wanted to ask some question but knew it would be improper to do so.

“If I sold my hair for two dollars and fifty cents,” Harriet prattled on, wide-eyed, seemingly as at home in Clay's arms as she would have been in Parnell's, “I could take her home with me for good. Do you know of a place where folks buy hair?”

Dara Rose closed her eyes briefly, mortified.

“Can't say as I do,” Clay replied affably. He was still looking at Dara Rose, though; she could feel it.

She opened her eyes, watched, tongue-tied with misery, as he gently set Harriet back on her feet.

“I'd name her Florence,” Harriet continued. “Don't you think that's a pretty name? Florence?”

Clay allowed as how it was a very nice name.

Dara Rose realized she was staring and looked quickly away, only to have her gaze collide with Mr. Bickham's. A benevolent smirk wreathed the storekeeper's round face.

“Looks like the snow's letting up a little,” Bickham said, with a glance at the window. “Maybe the marshal and his dog here could see you and little Harriet home safe while there's a lull.”

Dara Rose needed to get back to her place, in case Edrina was there or on her way, but it wouldn't be wise for her and Harriet to attempt the journey, however short, on their own. So she swallowed her pride and turned back to Clay. “Would you mind?” she asked.

Clay cleared his throat before answering, but his words still came out sounding husky. “No, ma'am,” he said, almost shyly. “I wouldn't mind.”

So Dara Rose bundled Harriet up as warmly as she could, and then herself, and Clay lifted Harriet up again, simultaneously whistling for the dog.

Chester got up immediately, ready to go.

“You give some thought to what I said, Miz Nolan,” Philo shouted after her, as she followed Clay out into
the waning snowstorm. “Ain't no shame in buying on credit!”

Dara Rose ignored him.

The snow, having fallen hard and fast all morning, was nearly knee-deep and powdery. Clay and the dog seemed to navigate it with relative ease, Chester moving in a hopping way that might have been comical under more ordinary circumstances, and Dara Rose picked her way along in the tracks of the marshal's boots.

Harriet, snug against Clay's chest, with the front of his coat around her, looked back over his shoulder at Dara Rose, her eyes merry with adventure. The child was clearly reveling in
Mr. McKettrick's
attention—it was imprudent to think of him as “Clay,” Dara Rose had decided—and no doubt pretending she had a papa again.

The thought made Dara Rose's throat ache like one big bruise, and her eyes scalded. She was glad Mr. McKettrick couldn't see her face.

They trooped on, Clay forging a way for all of them when the dog grew tired, and the snow was thickening again by the time they reached the house. The respite, it seemed, was nearly over.

The air was shiver-cold, and Chester needed to rest. Even though Dara Rose was mildly alarmed by the thought of the new marshal filling her house with his
purely masculine presence, she had no choice but to ask him in.

There was no sign of Edrina, which was both a relief and a worry to Dara Rose. Once she had her elder daughter at home, safe and sound, she'd move on to the other concerns—how the chickens were faring, for a start, and the state of the woodpile stacked against the back of the house. Thanks to the town council, there was a good supply of firewood, but some of it would need drying out before it could be burned.

Clay—
Mr. McKettrick
suddenly seemed too unwieldy even in her thoughts—walked straight through to the kitchen, set Harriet on her feet and went about building up the dwindling fire in the cookstove.

Chester practically collapsed on the rug in front of the sink.

“I'll go on to the schoolhouse,” Clay told Dara Rose, when he'd finished at the stove, “and see about bringing Edrina home. It would be a favor to me, Mrs. Nolan, if you'd let my dog stay here while I'm gone, since he's probably too tuckered out to go much farther.”

This time, Dara Rose welcomed the heat that surged through her, pulsing in her face. They weren't without their blessings, she and the children. “Of course,” she said awkwardly. “Harriet and I will look after Chester.
And I don't mind admitting I'm worried that Edrina might try to make her way home on her own.”

Clay nodded, grinned a little. “She might, at that,” he said.

That grin
did
something to Dara Rose. She told herself it was simple thankfulness. She needed help, and someone was there to give it and that was that.

“What about the other children?” she asked, as Clay started for the back door.

“If any of them are stranded at the schoolhouse,” he answered, his hand on the knob, “I'll make sure they get where they're supposed to go—after I bring your girl home, that is.” He turned toward Harriet, who was now on her knees next to Chester, all concern for his temperament evidently past, drying off his coat with a flour-sack dish towel, and tugged at the brim of his hat. “Thank you for minding my friend, there,” he told the child. “Looks as though he likes you.”

Harriet beamed. “I
knew
he wouldn't bite me,” she said.

Clay smiled briefly then, opened the door, leaned into the wind that rushed to meet him and stepped outside. The door closed behind him.

 

C
LAY FOUND HIS WAY
to the schoolhouse more from memory than by use of his eyesight, and Miss Krenshaw
met him at the door, took him firmly by the arm and pulled him inside, out of the cold and the wind and the blinding assault of the snow.

Except for Edrina, who was huddled close to the stove and bundled inside a faded quilt, the schoolmarm was alone. Evidently, the other kids had already been collected by kinfolks and taken home.

Edrina smiled at him. “I knew you'd come to fetch me, if Mama didn't,” she said, with a certainty that warmed his heart.

“Sit down, Marshal,” Miss Krenshaw all but commanded, indicating her desk chair, which was the only one in the schoolroom big enough for an adult. “I've got some coffee brewing in back.”

Clay didn't plan to tarry long, since the storm was more likely to get worse than it was to get better, and he wanted to get Edrina back to her mother and sister while the getting was good. But hot coffee sounded mighty nice to him just then, and he wouldn't mind sitting for a few minutes, either. He was still a young man, and fit, but that cold made his bones ache.

“Thank you,” he said, and took the offered chair.

Miss Krenshaw disappeared into the back, where she probably had private quarters, and returned promptly with the promised coffee.

“Thanks,” Clay repeated, taking the steaming mug from her hand.

Not one to be idle, it would seem, Miss Alvira got busy erasing the day's lessons off the blackboard.

“You'll be all right here, on your own?” Clay asked presently, restored by the tasty brew. Miss Alvira had laced it with whiskey, which raised her a notch in his already high estimation. Too bad he couldn't work up an interest in courting the lady.

“I'll be just fine,” Miss Alvira said, still busy. She sounded a mite affronted by the question, in fact. “I have everything I need, right here.”